1 837- ] A brief notice of some of the Persian poets. 



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A brief notice of some of the Persian Poets,— By Lieut. T. J. Newbold. 

 {Continued from* No. 13, Vol, IV, P. 389). 

 J ami Montana Nur-uddin. 



A famous poet born at the town of Jam, near Herat in Khorassan, 

 whence he derives his surname, about A. H. 817. His proper name is 

 Abdur Rahman Bin Ahmed. The date of his demise is said to be A. EL 

 898. He repaired at an early age to the splendid court of Sultan Abu 

 Syed Merza, a descendant of Tamerlane, who ruled in Khorassan until 

 873, A. H., when he was defeated and put to death by the Turcoman 

 leader Hassan Beg. Sultan Hussain, who eventually succeeded Abu 

 Syed, extended his protection to J ami, and treated him with greater fa- 

 vour even than his former patron. The Sultan's vizier, Mir Alii Shah 

 entertained for J ami the greatest friendship and attachment These 

 circumstances, and the numerous lively anecdotes related of him by 

 various Persian writers, stamp him to have been a man of ready wit s 

 engaging disposition, and a keen observer of men. 



A native of Ispahan, who was accustomed to boast of the productions 

 of his own provinces, and to regard with contempt any thing foreign or 

 extraneous, told J ami one day that there were melons at Ispahan, of 

 such an extraordinary size, that if a person sat on one he could not 

 touch the ground with his feet, the poet retorted, " We have not in 

 ; truth, at Herat, melons as large as those you have been at the trouble 

 of describing, but we have turnips several cubits in length." 



Another of Samarcand was one day extolling a species of grape 

 peculiar to his country, called Resh-i-Bdba, the beard of one's father. 

 J ami asked him whether that grape was more delicious than a sort 

 growing in Khorassan called the Khayeh-i-Ghulaman. The man of 

 Samarcand answered in the negative; when J ami observed, "in that 

 case you must admit that the Khayeh-i- Ghuldman of Khorassan are of 

 more value than the beards of your fathers, Resh-i-Bdba.* 



One day a poetical aspirant read to J ami a wretched poem of his own 

 composition ; of which, he boasted, not a single word contained the letter 

 Alif. J ami dryly remarked that he had better have left out all the 

 letters of the alphabet 



It is said that, on one occasion when /am* had set out for the purpose 

 of paying a visit to his patron Sultan Abu Syed, on his way to the pa- 

 lace he heard that the monarch was immersed in the pleasures of the 



* This pleasantry ill bears translation : the pith of Jamfs jest will be sufficiently 

 obvious to the Persian scholar, 



